Nelson Demille - Gold Coast, Part I

Материал готовится, пожалуйста, возвращайтесь позднее

Nelson Demille

Gold Coast The first book in the John Sutter series To my three budding authors: Ryan, Lauren, and Alex.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank Daniel and Ellen Barbiero for sharing with me their invaluable insights into Gold Coast life, and also Audrey Randall Whiting for sharing with me her knowledge of Gold Coast history. I would also like to acknowledge my gratitude to John Mariani and Harry Mariani for their generous hospitality and support. I also want to thank Pam Carletta for her tireless and professional work on the manuscript of this book. And once again, my deepest gratitude to Ginny De Mille, editor, publicist, and good friend. A man lives not only his personal life as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries. Thomas Mann The Magic Mountain PART I The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. Walt Whitman Preface to Leaves of Grass

CHAPTER 1 I first met Frank Bellarosa on a sunny Saturday in April at Hicks' Nursery, an establishment that has catered to the local gentry for over a hundred years. We were both wheeling red wagons filled with plants, fertilizers, and such toward our cars across the gravel parking field. He called out to me, "Mr Sutter? John Sutter, right?" I regarded the man approaching, dressed in baggy work pants and a blue sweatshirt. At first, I thought it was a nurseryman, but then as he drew closer, I recognized his face from newspapers and television. Frank Bellarosa is not the sort of celebrity you would like to meet by chance, or in any other way, for that matter. He is a uniquely American celebrity, a gangster actually. A man like Bellarosa would be on the run in some parts of the world, and in the presidential palace in others, but here in America he exists in that place that is aptly called the underworld. He is an unindicted and unconvicted felon as well as a citizen and a taxpayer. He is what federal prosecutors mean when they tell parolees not to 'consort with known criminals'. So, as this notorious underworld character approached, I could not for the life of me guess how he knew me or what he wanted or why he was extending his hand toward me. Nevertheless, I did take his hand and said, "Yes, I'm John Sutter." "My name's Frank Bellarosa. I'm your new neighbour." What? I think my face remained impassive, but I may have twitched. "Oh," I said, "that's…" Pretty awful. "Yeah. Good to meet you." So my new neighbour and I chatted a minute or two and noted each other's purchases. He had tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and basil. I had impatiens and marigolds. Mr Bellarosa suggested that I should plant something I could eat. I told him I ate marigolds and my wife ate impatiens. He found that funny. In parting, we shook hands without any definite plans to see each other again, and I got into my Ford Bronco. It was the most mundane of circumstances, but as I started my engine, I experienced an uncustomary flash into the future, and I did not like what I saw. CHAPTER 2 I left the nursery and headed home. Perhaps it would be instructive to understand the neighbourhood into which Mr Frank Bellarosa had chosen to move himself and his family. It is quite simply the best neighbourhood in America, making Beverly Hills or Shaker Heights, for instance, seem like tract housing. It is not a neighbourhood in the urban or suburban sense, but a collection of colonial-era villages and grand estates on New York 's Long Island.